Cameron slows health reforms

7 Jun 11
The 2013 deadline for GP consortiums to take over the commissioning of NHS care has been scrapped by Prime Minister David Cameron
By Richard Johnstone | 8 June 2011

The 2013 deadline for GP consortiums to take over the commissioning of NHS care has been scrapped by Prime Minister David Cameron.

CameronhealthspeechPA


This was one of a number of changes Cameron announced to the government’s health reforms yesterday, following the close of the NHS Future Forum consultation on the plans. He promised he would be personally accountable for the changes.

Speaking at a London hospital, Cameron said that GP commissioning would now go ahead only when the consortiums were ‘good and ready’.

The NHS Commissioning Board, which is to be established by the Health and Social Care Bill and will be accountable for NHS outcomes, would undertake any commissioning that GPs couldn’t, he added.

The prime minister also announced that the role of Monitor, set to become the economic regulator of the NHS, would be expanded to include a duty to integrate services to provide joined-up care.

Integration between primary and secondary care, mental and physical care, and health and social care would likely lead to ‘clinically led commissioning, not just GP commissioning’, he said, with the inclusion of a range of health care professionals.

The competition role for Monitor would ensure ‘fair competition, not cherry picking’ by other providers, he added.

Greater competition would help introduce ‘fresh thinking, new ideas, different ways of doing things and better value for money’, Cameron said. He added that Monitor would ‘protect and promote the interests of people who use health care services and use competition as a means to that end’.

He outlined five guarantees on health policy. These included the pledge that spending on the NHS would increase. ‘You can hold me to [it] and I will be personally accountable for [it],’ Cameron said.

However, he warned that ‘changing the NHS today is the only way to protect the NHS for tomorrow’.

He added: ‘Every year without modernisation the costs escalate. We can’t pretend that the extra money we are putting in will be enough to meet the challenges.’

The NHS Confederation said it was encouraged by the changes. Deputy chief executive David Stout said that the government had listened to many of the views and concerns of the health service put forward to the NHS Future Forum, around integration of services.

‘We have stressed the importance of focusing on integration where it is what is right for patients, and encouraging competition where current providers are delivering a poor service,’ Stout said.

But Labour leader Ed Miliband said that Cameron’s five pledges were an attempt ‘to protect the health service from himself, his government and his policy’.

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